Who'd of thought! Back in 1994, as a nice collaborative effort, I pulled out a puzzle of Lewis and Clark and placed it in the high school library! I was doing my part in a collaborative teaching project for a group of students researching Lewis and Clark. They loved it!
To my surprise, many other students and teachers took a few minutes to add their assistance in this puzzle. I wondered if mischievousness would cause pieces to disappear. Quite the contrary!
It has been five years now, and I guess we have completed about 75 puzzles. Rarely does a piece disappear! It is a sense of accomplishment by many when a puzzle is completed. This is left on display for a complete day, but rest assured, people are anxious to get started on a new one.
There are very few puzzles that we cannot step up to the challenge. It provides a community sense of accomplishment for our students and staff.
The puzzle spot offers a quiet zone where people can unwind, reflect, or calm down! It is a pleasure to see a group of five standing or sitting around this area, working together. This is a happy place to be! So, come on over. We have a 1,000 piece puzzle to do! And wait until you see what is next!!!
I have puzzles in my classroom and do love to see the collaboration - mostly an "indoor recess" activity. We do puzzles at home too. My sisters and I used to have puzzle races when we were young - build the puzzle, split the puzzle in half - who can finish her half first. If I remember correctly, I won the most :)
ReplyDeleteThat's a cool idea to add some competition to it. We could simply say, the one at the end of the period that finds the most gets a treat, front of the line, etc., etc. At high school...it could be gets to leave that period two minutes early!
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